So the other day, hate-speech purveyor and terrorism fomenter Ann Coulter gave a speech at the University of Texas.  A heckler was arrested -- not booed, not engaged in debate, not asked to leave, but arrested -- for asking an inappropriate question and following it up with inappropriate (I believe the courts would call them "indecent") hand gestures. 

Now the heckler responds:

[The] protestors were told to be good all along. They were told to sit in the back and hold their signs and leave quietly. No wonder hippies get such a bad rap nowadays; protestors today might as well be ornaments on the Rightmobile. When I want someone to know I'm pissed off, I'm going to throw down and give them a good shit-ruining. . .

Liberal protestors posed well-intentioned but woefully timid questions and got shot down in a hail of ignorant shitfire from the She-Dragon. Standing in line awaiting my turn, I watched her send a moderate Republican, who had questioned the sheer incendiary magnitude of her rhetoric, walk away in tears when she tore him apart for daring to question her.

So yes, I saw my "opportunity to say something lewd and offensive." And I took it.

She had just said something about gay marriage, the typical rightwing bullshit spiel that is still convincing people that the Bible is really the Constitution. Knowing that taking the time to say something insightful, specific, or even slightly critical would get me a lame comeback and a ticket back to my seat, I realized that the only way to win this battle was to fight fire with fire. Or bullshit with bullshit.

Offensive?  Yes.  Inappropriate?  Sure.  But since when has our First Amendment been abrogated?  (Or is it just illegal in Texas?)  See, heckling King George is why we exist as a nation.  Freedom of speech can't be just extended to popular, well-mannered speech; otherwise it's not worth protecting.  When will the right-wingers get this through their skulls?  Because it's not America they love.  It's not even the Bible, and it's certainly not the Constitution.  It's power, and their own agendas, and themselves.

Incidentally, the arrest report indicates that children under the age of ten were present at Coulter's speech.  Wouldn't it be considered bad parenting to subject your kids to her ill-informed bile?

Comments

[arto]

Y'know, beyond the actual rudeness, dude had a point: Some conservative gay marriage opponents (and while I don't know whether or not Pudenda Shenanigans belongs in this category, Canada's most vocal gay-basher, Bishop Fred Henry, certainly does) claim gay marriage is unnatural and unholy because marriage exists, supposedly, for the sole purpose of creating children. So what about straight married couples who choose to engage in sexual activities that biologically couldn't end in reproduction--should the government go after them next? Obviously not, despite what the law might say in Arkansas or Tennessee or wherever.

That's the limitation of trying to use the F-bomb and friends as political speech, though, people hear the offensiveness before they hear the actual meaning. Kinda reminds me in an oblique way of Jon Stewart's appearance on Crossfire, actually--except his inability to get a coherent point across actually illustrated his point that noone ever uses actual reasoning or debate on those types of shows.

[Jason Whong]

So what's the problem? Ann Coulter, like her, or not, was shooting down the people she didn't agree with. As the person on stage, she can do that.

Saying the f-word doesn't appear to be a part of any civilized debate or critique of the President or of Coulter. It doesn't have anything to do with "heckling George," who was not there, unless you consider criticism of any conservative a criticism of George Bush. But the question wasn't even criticism. It was disruptive "bullshit." And if Texas wants to make the f-bomb arrestable in cases where it's disruptive, let them have it. We live in New York, where bare female breasts are legal, and we can have that.

I don't think taking 10-year-old kids to see Ann Coulter is necessarily a bad idea, either. In many ways, it's at least more honest than sending a kid to private or public school to be indoctrinated by non-parental figures. At least you're taking a stake in what your kid is exposed to by taking them anyplace.